Detective Stories Episode I: The Disappearance of Maribel Hearn
by Lucky Mei
Summary: Two girls who wish to stay as they are, gazing towards the future. They're met with a tangible threat outside the realm of physics & the supernatural, namely; an incurable disease. This is the first puzzle piece of a larger story, concerning the mysterious existence of Maribel Hearn.
1. Chapter 0: A Special Day

**A Special Day****  
**** -**_By Mei_

Maribel seemed pleased with her best friend's choice of venue, a gorgeous location near a solemn-looking lake. The eastern magnolia trees were in full blossom, revealing a white shroud covering the surrounding sky. It's seeds releasing a strong yet sweet odor, invigorating their visitors with the essence of youth. 'Phew, figured this wouldn't be enough,' thought Renko 'but seeing her smile puts my mind at ease', and what a smile it was. Imagine the feeling of successfully making it through a life-or-death exam without having studied, multiply that emotion by a thousand as you're treated by sugarsweet home baked cookies at grandma's and there you have it. The feeling of being greeted by Maribel Hearn's smile.  
"Is something the matter, Ren~ko?", miss Hearn spoke with a confounded expression aimed at Usami Renko, the organiser of this haphazard tea party in the woods. 'Then again, these aren't as much _the woods_ as it's the backyard of a soon-to-be space elevator.', thought our organiser, completely neglecting Maribel's question as her gaze left this world to explore the surrounding area. Maribel pouted, sipping her bitter ceylon tea as her gaze joined Renko's.  
"It's a shame, really. Figured we'd have more chances to come by here once our 2nd year in uni' was over Merry.", Maribel's pout softened upon hearing this, dropping her guard, "It really is a shame. This was part of your family's property for a 100 years wasn't it?", Renko quickly retorted, "99 and a half Merry!", she hung her head on the table. Closing her eyes in defeat, she heard Maribel move about. This immediately triggered an image in her mind, of her best friend reaching out over Renko's school desk a late evening at school, during detention. The sun shone brightly on the horizon as it descended, piercing her eyes leaving only the faint afterimage of Maribel's beautiful figure reaching out to Renko. Her vision ended with Merry patting her head, forcing her back to reality.  
"There there Renko, don't worry about it." A rubbery sound was heard approaching, wheels turning, slightly nudging the marmor table. 'Oh', thought miss Usami as a flustered Merry closed in, reaching out her hand which barely made it to the girl's head. "I'm fine with it. So should you be.", Maribel spoke softly, that smile from earlier reemerging to meet her best friend's tired gaze. 'There's no way in hell I'm okay with it', Renko thought, analyzing Merry from tip to toe, 'Seeing you in that state every day, there's no way I'm okay with it.' Miss Usami then lay there with a defeated expression, accepting the softest of headpats. She carried a solemn expression not very different in feel to the lake, brazing for the impact of its inevitable destruction.

Maribel Hearn's frequent hospital visits due to having visited worlds beyond our own had left her in a paralysed state from the waist down, her skipping, child-like figure impossible to ever witness again. The duo had exchanged their frequent walks together; with the science freak rolling that expensive wheelchair of Merry's for her friend. It's a wonder how technology has advanced so much in areas like entertainment and space exploration, but left the sick and elderly behind, stuck with machines from the fargone past. The doctors of Haibara hospital had given Renko an estimate on how long Merry had to live. 3 months, at best. At this point in time there was nothing left to do but wait for the inevitable, as they so carefully put it.  
"Want to go far a walk Renko? ", Merry's soft spoken voice made sure images flashed in miss Usami's mind of times she would never again experience, Merry's adventurous spirit in full display. The blissful youth and friendship she had taken part in, was coming to an end. "I mean... I sure would at least!", Maribel shouted with difficulty, raising her fist all starry-eyed.  
"It's a good thing I have you carrying me around whenever you visit, it gets so bothersome when I'm on my own hehe.", a coarse-sounding giggle escaped Merry's lips, followed by a cough. She sipped her tea and continued. "Then again there's no need to if you don't feel like it, I'm glad just spending some time with my best friend." Renko stood up showing incredible resolve, all sense of defeat evaporating. 'Terminal disease my ass, the only thing terminal is my faith in modern medical science. I'll find a way to cure her even if I have to cross the Sanzu river and back to do it!', Merry's best friend thought as she turned her head in a stilted way towards miss Hearn, giving her a thumbs up.  
"Time for the comfiest damn walk you've ever had! UsamiHearn GATAI! ASSEMBLE!"  
Merry was razed out of the gazebo they'd been cozed up in, leaving a trail of dirt in the ground after the wheelchair. The initially terrified screams of Maribel soon turned into laughter, as the sun sank down to expose a beautiful night sky. The image of those two channeled a feeling of pure bliss.

'I'll find a way. The wonders of magic and the supernatural that you believe in Merry is something I have to learn to understand. Maybe even respect. If it's trying to take you away from me I'll just have to steal you back. Whether through the power of magic, or with the precision of science. The two of us will make it out of this situation. That's my promise to you.'  
-Renko Usami

_**-2 months later, Maribel Hearn and the entirety of Haibara Hospital inexplicably disappears.-**_

_**Author's Note: **_This right here is my first real published work. It's not something I consider a breakthrough in my writing nor a pinnacle of absolute perfection. However, please do shower me with any form of criticism regarding the format of my story or how I present it through my writing. Is the characterization incorrect? Am I overindulgent in my own fiction? Are the characters... well, as they should be?

I hope to hear your thoughts. Please enjoy this small prologue for what's to come! There are two complete chapters finished, with the rest of this story-line drafted. I've been trying my best to learn and understand these characters and the setting for the last... 6 years, and hopefully my research and lack of nerve to actually publish anything has come to fruition. Anyone who reads this; I love you. Thank you.


	2. Chapter 1: Classroom Sunset

** I**

_"Merry. something odd happened. Or should I say, "is" happening right now. In front of my very eyes I am experiencing what can only be interpreted as a dream . A sequence of disjointed images pouring from the depths of my imagination; intermingling with the brain's internal cataloging of the prior days' events and ushering forth to me a vivid stream of interconnecting photos followed by incomprehensible jargon. Words that mean nothing coming from colorless wraiths, presenting to me what some philosophers would interpret as 'meaningful absurdity'. But to me there is no meaning to be found in this jumbled mess, so I concentrate all my willpower into stripping this dream of all its superfluous flab. The extra bits of style sacrificed to provide more context and substance. Not the physical kind, mind you."_

_-Renko Usami_On the eve of a new morning the young lady was having a dream. From vivid to concise it tried its best to arouse a reaction from within her. To entertain - whilst at the same time going through the motions of effortlessly recording the prior day's happenings inside her brilliant mind. For anyone else, deciphering a dream would have the dreamer repeat the painful process of leaping one step forward and dashing two steps back, inevitably falling out of the dream knowing less than they had before.

But Renko always tried staying two steps ahead of any situation, dream and reality alike. Attempting to blindside her, the dream first tried distracting Renko with a vast and endless scenery of colours, acting as a kaleidoscope of useless glimpses of times where she could have better spent doing anything but what was being shown.

A dead end clue. Self-doubt in the morning. Styling her hair differently. Time had been wasted, and the memories of those times are now trying their best to waste more of hers. A fickle attempt at inviting the self-harming nature of an adolescent girl, a system meant to distract a child from the inner mechanisms that lay deep within her mind. Mechanisms kept hidden to protect the bearer from his or her own painful memories. One of these being precisely what Renko was trying to reach.

"If I can just focus more clearly on the task at hand. Think Renko, think. We never dream, we're here for a reason and that reason is… what exactly?"

A tunnel of images swiftly swarmed her, covering Renko's body from head to toe. As the swarm ensnared her body in a zigzag pattern, entering her mind one by one these pictures displayed all the memories she had tried her best to suppress for most of her life. A mansion floor covered in blood, broken glass and dark shadows lurking near street corners. Fear of abandonment, fear of the unknown. But most of all, fear of being left alone.

"What good is a one-girl duo?", the young lady squirmed her way through each and every image, painstakingly revisiting her hidden past. "What good is the sealing club without you?" What she asked for deep within her subconscious was but to relive a moment of which her mind didn't think she'd be able to handle. So it was punishing her severely. "What good is a dream that bears no purpose or significance in real life? This memory of you is something I must reach. ", she resisted the bindings.

Renko wasn't trying to escape the literal trappings of her mind. She was trying to swim through its' fail safes. The system set in place to protect Renko from her past was being counteracted by the girl's immense will. She had turned the tables on her own mind, entering a lucid dream.  
"I'll grasp it with all I've got. If just so I won't regret it by morning!", her fingertips were slowly rising from the ground like withered tree branches to snatch it, that one image, that one dreamlike memory she wanted so badly to remember. Her sleeping body began twitching at the immense pressure presented in the dream, reaching out to grasp something which wasn't even real. Then everything went dark.

"Did I succeed? Is this it?", lucid and delirious Renko had been transported to a dark place. A stage was lit up by a myriad of spotlights, one by one setting up the scene with heavy urban and steel-like noises. About twenty-one benches made up of paper were placed out, with two stick-figures in black and white sitting at the opposite ends of the classroom. In came a lipstick-covered face with two absurdly small legs and a fractured hip. How a face with two small legs could have a fractured hip was of no concern to the dream.

_ "Good evening miss Usami, welcome to detention.", a blank face spoke out on stage.  
"Whatever you say nun-abee.", a bored school girl replied, clearly agitated.  
"Feisty. Detention extended by thirty minutes. What was my name?"  
"Nun-abee."  
"Sixty minutes."  
"..."_, suddenly a speaker entered the stage greeting the non-existent audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what a scene! Renko Usami getting long overdue punishment by professor Okazaki! The lipstick-covered monster bids adieu as the two problem students are left to their own devices! … but she sure looks a bit like a nun doesn't she?"_, _following a round of applause from the empty seats next to the girl she could hardly disagree. Wearing a red dress with puffed up white sleeves, carrying an aura of superiority - this woman looked like she came straight out of a story about witches and wizards.  
"Red hair, red ribbon, red shoes and a red vest over a long white shirt. And red eyes. Was she actually Satan?"  
"Don't forget her red fluttering cape!", the speaker replied ecstatically._  
_"How could I forget! It looked so silly I simultaneously rejected and subconsciously suppressed the idea that any form of authority would embarrass themselves like that! Wait, was that a speaker…?"

Professor Yumemi Okazaki was a brilliant but whimsical teacher who seemed to utterly despise Renko for her overly pessimistic mindset. A few months after the event presented on stage she was fired after having been caught spreading misinformation about the concept of "magic", writing dozens upon dozens of essays related to paranormal phenomena, astral projection, esoteric teachings and norse rune magic, to later use these in various classes as "sources". These were then spread among the students at school through unofficial channels by a perky blonde girl wearing a white and blue sailor uniform. This would later affect the lives of both Renko and her best friend to be and they would both lament the fact that Miss Okazaki was released from her mission as teacher at Ryle academy. The speaker kept blabbering on.

"And the second that Okazaki left the classroom our girl with an attitude quickly rose up from her chair! Walking and walking in circles upon circles around the classroom, absolutely bewildered by her predicament! What was she to do in this enclosed space for a whole hour, from 5 - 6 PM? But of course, what else than to audibly vent out her frustrations?", consciously agitating our dreamer, the blank-faced speaker smirked at Renko as the play continued.  
_  
"This is ridiculous. All I did was utterly destroy her in front of class with my essay __**"Debunking dumb and frivolously dressed wannabe mages in the 21st century"**__! There is no such thing as magic in this world, there never was and there never will be. End of story."  
_This caricature of Renko was beyond obnoxious, sulking about in the corner of this small classroom minding her own business. _  
_"Oh no… I remember now why I've classified this as a harmful memory. Is there any way to shut it o-...?", suddenly her voice was cancelled out by the screeching noise of an improperly programmed microphone. Imagine the sound of a knifed glove scratching at a blackboard, but in digital. Following this the speaker continued.  
"_Sorry but not sorry to interrupt you miss Usami, you're interrupting the other lead actor! Take a gander and bask in your adolescent bigotry towards magic!",_the stick figure from the bottom left corner of the classroom had unbeknownst to stick-Renko rose up, walked to her bench and placed her curious stick-head on the other's shoulder. Stick-Renko with choppy movements slowly turned around and so did the entire stage like a roulette wheel, as the stick figure cutout of the unknown student blossomed into the image of hers which Renko of our world fondly remembers.

"_You're quite the jokester you little rascal.",_ with a wide smile and closed eyes she pinched stick-Renko's two-dimensional nose and let out a giggle. This was Maribel Hearn, or in short-  
_"Merry. Merry the magician."  
_This was how the girl who would later self-publish serious publications about paranormal experiences with Renko under the pen-name Dr. Latency first met her best and only friend. Renko's initial reaction was to burst out into uncontrollable laughter.  
_"HAHAHAHAHA! Magician?! What a joke! But thank you for the laugh, I'd hate to be stuck in this room for over an hour without comedy gold like yourself keeping me entertained. What are you in for? Fornication with the teacher? You two probably have a lot in common, I mean there's your dress for starters, then the eyes-...", _stick-Renko's gaze was unbeknownst to her surveying the body of her classmate, until she reached the eyes. Those gleaming stars of unparalleled beauty shut the girl up immediately, leaving her slightly flushed and embarrassed.  
_  
_Maribel Hearn was a fair, young child with slick and wavy blonde hair, adorning a long and purple buttoned dress and a frilled white mob cap. Some parts of her hair were curly, some flat. Her shoes were akin to those worn by tap-dancing spaniards, carrying a childish vibe. There was an easier way to describe this 18-year old girl, however.

She was like a doll. Upon opening her eyes one could notice how they carried a green and mesmerizing hue, making fleeting gazes impossible as the beauty reflected within was hard to escape.  
For the next two minutes she was left staring at this smiling buffon of a lady and our Renko in the audience was left equally as flushed as the Renko on stage. Maribel did not carry lipstick, but those lips were soft blood-colored marshmallows.  
"_I'd laugh if I could but boy oh boy this Renko girl's clearly got some issues! To you kids in the audience, don't break any ethical barriers these two might the moment they're off screen if you catch my drift?", _the speaker was now starting to grate on both the Renko of our world's nerves as well as the paper cut-out audience.  
"Out. Now.", Renko responded, and with a thousand-yard stare she forced the speaker to leave her subconscious, with only the scene from her memory left playing out its course. She stood up from her seat, walked right on through the seats in front of her as the phantoms of an audience evaporated one after the other. Renko was **cutting out the fluff** to help better focus on the stage play in front of her. As the theatre seats all vanished like twinkling stardust, Renko pulled a comfy-looking chair out of thin air, seating herself on it backwards, facing the stage.

"And here comes the response.", she spoke softly. Bearing a bright smile inconsistent with the somber emotion felt in her eyes, Renko focused solely on the caricature of Maribel, closing her eyelids in an attempt to better remember exactly how Merry looked inside her own memory. There shouldn't be any difference between what's shown on-stage and inside Renko's mind, but she still tries her best to conjure up that perfect image of her response.

_"You're free to stare at me the whole day, I don't mind. Everyone else always does but… I feel your gaze is different from theirs. Yours acts as a mirror conveying that which it is you feel about the one you gaze upon, like a crystal ball foreseeing the future of all things as well as the end of all things. Not one of contempt or disapproval, but one of genuine curiosity and wonder. I do wonder why, why someone like me professing myself to be a magician could have piqued your curiosity?"  
_What followed her rhetorical question was silence, as Merry sat down on the bench in front of the standing Renko figure, her right leg crossing the left as she stretched her back.

_"Because you're Renko Usami, granddaughter of the sealing club's founder Sumireko Usami. A no-nonsense, "I get what I want", scientist kind of gal. And my idol. I'll have to thank Miss Okazaki for giving me this opportunity later."  
__  
_Bits and pieces of the dreamscape interiors were beginning to crumble in response, like a malfunctioning video game cartridge the game that was Renko's dream was going haywire. As if in response to this phenomenon; the now more than real Merry caricature stood up and slowly began walking towards the Renko Usami of our world. She flashed open her eyes in shock, but Merry continued.

_"But it looks like she'll have to wait, my sweet dear Renko. You came here looking for answers didn't you? There are no answers to be found in small fragmented memories hidden underneath a coat of darkness, you get that don't you?"__, _as the world was falling apart all around them the two girls reached out to one another, only to be met with a wall of reinforced glass taller than any mountain, its peak hidden in purple haze. Renko started bashing the wall with all her might, unable to face Merry as parts of her inner self began manifesting through her eyelids. Revealing a previously hidden sadness she could no longer hold back.

_"Don't give up hope. I'm probably out there somewhere, waiting for my prince in shining white armor to save me. As she always has.",_ with a soft voice her persistent smile was fading. "Though, _it is a bit silly of me calling you a prince to this day though isn't it?", _a sad tone escaped her vocal cords, as time suddenly came to a halt. It appeared as if the only things left in the dream were the two girls and the cold, oppressive wall, a silent space with only one the light of the pure girl's soul present to stay darkness' hand. Maribel knocked on the wall twice, catching the barely standing Renko's attention who looked up at Merry, despite feeling what she considered to be shame running down her cheek.

_"I have a birthday gift for you to open before you take your leave Renko. It's probably the one thing you were searching for the most when burrowing down deep inside this dream world. It's behind you… take care."_, her voice was fading. Together with some static noiseand a quick bright light likened to that of an exploding light bulb, Merry vanished without a trace, as did the wall which had previously separated them. Behind Renko, an enormous theatre-sized screen was being built from scratch, pixel by pixel by mechanised bees. Once finished, it revealed a short but concise out of focus film of Maribel with white noiz in the background, uttering the words-

_**"Would you like to be friends with a magician?"**_

Then her mind went blank.

** II  
**

Several hours had passed since the dream first began, only to end with a sudden and sharp pain piercing Renko's heart. But the pain was not physical in origin.  
Nay, much like the dream it was lucid and elevated. As if her soul had been shaken at its core by the sharp spear of Longinus, the pain was more symbolic of something sinister lurking deep within. A pain which she would most likely never truly come to terms with, as with most things concerning the disappearance of her best friend Maribel Hearn a year ago to this day.  
"You went off without me again didn't you…"

A few days before their graduation ceremony from Ryle academy, Merry the Magician performed the greatest of magic tricks. She phased out of existence, vanishing without a trace along with the entire west wing of the Haibara Hospital near Mount Fuji.

It was an outstanding institution specialising in with treatment of strange unexplained medical anomalies the country of Japan could ever face, for there were not many of these left in a world ruled by science, where mysticism fades away with every passing moon. Like a sliced piece of pie it had been cut, snatched and consumed by some strange entity, redacted by some government agency, hidden from the public by a private organisation and maybe even obliterated by some photon ray from another galaxy.

The curse of the unknown mysteries of existence had taken a hold of the girl Renko cared for the most, leaving her stranded in reality without a sense of normalcy. Ironic isn't it? That a girl such as herself would seek out a normal everyday life once all good things came to an end? The bond they shared, the memories they created and the life they led were all precious pieces of everyday life that Renko refused to let go of. Taking a quick glance at her digital clock, Renko quickly smudged the blur covering her eyes.

_"7 AM, is it?", _she thought to herself with a cold blank stare wishing to bear witness to something more interesting than whatever this rundown apartment was supposed to be. Despite her interest in technology and the betterment of mankind, Renko barely took part in the earthly pleasures of other mortals like herself. There was no games console in her room, no 10D surround sound virtual space, no interstellar livestreams playing over absurdly large LED screens nor the constant buzzing of electronics.

She can't stand being surrounded by excessive noise, it disturbs her thinking when awake and ruins her dreams when sleeping. What she did have of importance though was a spaceship-patterned couch, a rice-cooker and a decades old flip-phone. There was that one notebook Merry gave her last christmas which was forever on display on top of her desk too, but she would never consider that book to be anyone else but Merry's. A gift, from Renko's perspective is something you're entrusted with as long as the friendship between the related parties lasts or until the day you die. Rolling over in her bed she curled up like a moth, stuck in a state of non-evolution.

"Stupid fucking clock.", upon smashing her clock and throwing it halfway across the room she realised that she didn't own a clock. "Oh no.", Renko gasped; quickly jumping out of bed. Half-naked with assets flailing she ran and tripped over her bedding, trying to reach "the clock". Mood lights in red and purple permanently installed into her apartment unit by the superintendent lit up one by one, reacting to her every step. "The clock" you see was not a clock at all, but in a delirious state of daydreaming lunacy she had thought herself to be the Renko from four years ago, the one still owning a watch. Upon discovering the "alarm" function of her cellphone two years prior she had quickly thrown the clock away, like she did just now to "the clock".

But this was not the Renko from several years prior running about in the nude, this was Renko of today. A savvy, sharp and brilliant young lady who had just thrown her buzzing cell phone halfway across the room, breaking a vase carrying one overgrown japanese peace lily out of seven. Her reason for keeping seven of these was because it was the most scientifically lucky number, whether it's with cards or dice. In this case the dice were thrown, clearly landing on a seven. And then there were only six left.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no!", as she was busy grabbing the now drenched phone from the puddle of water, dirt and broken glass; a gruff voice was paging in a message on the other end:

_"Happy birthday to yooou, happy birthday to yoooou! Happy birthday dear niieece-!"_

Renko was beyond flustered, exposed and agitated. The fact that the phone which she had thrown herself at to save was now transmitting video of her sexually illicit appearance only helped worsen the situation. Next to the rusty aged voice of her uncle the situation was growing dire and she was hardly dressed for the occasion.

_"Oh my Renko, you sure are your mother's daughter haha! You've grown so much, especially near the-..."  
_"-regions you've never bore witness to nor had the pleasure of feeling-, is it uncle?"  
_"..."_

After a moment of silence and Renko covering up the facecam on her phone, her uncle Gilboa snapped out of it. Wiping the sweat from his frizzled mug he continued.

_"You seem eh-, occupied. I'll call you up again once you're finished prepping up. … Wait, is that one of my peace lilies?"_

And with that she ended the call. A broken vase, a damaged phone, a late awakening and a dream without a set conclusion. The day had only just begun and it was already starting to look like a mess.

But Renko was a mess, emotionally. Life without Merry was taking a heavy toll on her, leaving the girl to wander down paths in her mind that she dare not speak of. Petty escapism hiding behind every drawer in her home, not related to stress relief but relief for the soul was waiting to be used. The lonely girl thought about all these morning failures as she went over to open her drawer, revealing a sharp-looking object carrying a neon-green liquid which is best left up to your imagination. As lonely as she was the temptation to escape her cold dreary reality was ever so tempting, as she further approached the solution of the weak, her mind drifted to what was lying face down on top of the drawer.

Renko's curiosity got the better of her melancholy and she flipped the rectangular frame, revealing a photo of two girls spending some time at a ghostly field in the middle of nowhere. At the bottom right corner of the picture the words "Remind You" were etched in, by Merry. The cold, dark eyes of Renko's turned to a soft mush, watering if only for a bit. Reminded of the smile from four years ago, the smile shown to her in the dream, the smile which Merry so preciously carried in the picture, Renko slammed the drawer closed, locking it. Never had she succumbed to the fear of loneliness and basked in the harmful temptations of man, today would be no exception. Except for when alcohol is involved, but that's a different subject. And on that subject, we have the girl's uncle.

The only person Renko knows aside from Maribel is her uncle, Gilboa Jun'ya Usami. A drunkard private detective with connections to local law enforcement and government agencies abroad. Not the best connections, but good enough to keep him afloat. Ever since Merry disappeared she's spent more and more time with this rugged looking fellow from an estranged part of her family. To quote himself:  
_"To drown thine sorrow in liquid of old is a fine thing to do as long as you're not being told. To stop, that is. By me."_

This best sums up the personality and character of her uncle, the man who would give Renko a home to stay at, a job to work at and a purpose. That is; to find Maribel Hearn as if her life depended on it, which it by no coincidence did. Sacrificing potential revenue in pursuing easier to crack cases and giving up most of his free time for this young relative of his was not something Gilboa did only for her, but for himself as well. To make right the things he's done wrong to his sister Aiko, Renko's mother.

_"Your head is stuck in the clouds, staring at rifts waiting 'till they open up pathways to the stars. It's beautiful Renko, oh so beautiful. Your dark brown eyes remind me of her so much, the same eyes as your mother. It's going to be alright, one day. And until that day has come-..."_

"..-I'll stay by your side, when no one else will."

After reminiscing for a bit she swiftly got dressed, cleaned up her mess and prepared to leave for her uncle's car. She stopped for a moment and listened to the sounds of her apartment. The quiet and eerie nature of it lent itself susceptible to outside noise. Heavy rain and thunder this early in the morning was not unheard of during the japanese spring, having moved nearby mount Fuji in Kyoto to stay closer to where Merry disappeared.

Leaving her black hat and adorning a long and slim army-green raincoat over her abnormally plain white shirt, she then slipped on a pair of heavy black boots to endure the harsh weather outside. And harsh it was. The second she stepped out of the rundown apartment building she was soaked from head to toe.


End file.
